Her eyes, your solemn witness
are so unlike mine

I am untamed!
a loose humanoid chained
in gold
always spinning
under high beams
like it's no big deal

(while you reside
in your mind)

but why
can't I dream too?
I wanted you
to stay
you energized me

(every contact
left me broken yet intact)

Hallelujah!
You're outside!
Traced your face
in refracted light
Stand-still silhouette
Crop her
out
Fill the void
with blackened foil
while she makes nasty
public announcements
(and loves the attention
creating irrelevant banquets
and barbecues)

This was never my war
so hold fast to us
or crawl or
meet me at the door--
Wherever the blame feels
a little less
and confess
I was the one
you were looking for

Happiness is not something you seek.
It's not a location or another person.
It's not latent or inactive or waiting for discovery.
It's already there, your invisible garment.
It's a choice you make daily--a perspective
through which you decide to see your life.

Thus happiness is perpetually within reach.
You could be zoneless, drenched in darkness,
hollow-bellied, devoid of material,
the traces of your footsteps long-faded,
and yet,
you could still be
radiant.

There was a fence, it was
white, it lined the road, the road was
made of stones, the air was
always hot and sticky, holding moisture
the sun felt dry and prickly
on your skin, the grass was stiff and long, like straw, extending
into an invisible backdrop.
The sky was vast, wrapping around the farmlands, the trees,
the quiet grass, the yellow and
white and pink houses with frayed wooden doors. Peach and
violet clouds splayed magnificently
across this sky at sunset like smears of paint. Trucks and cars
bumped down this narrow,
hidden path as the days trickled into
nights.

When you’re thirty, you’re supposed to know
things already. You’re supposed to have
your **** together. A wife, maybe
even a kid. But this man still felt
like a boy. Shrugging life away
with cigarettes stealthily
torn from the box,
afternoon breaks
whistling through the
scabby throat, weeping silently
into his cigarette, smiling empty through
the golden tint of a pitcher of beer. Sadness sat
in his eyes and it never seemed to go away. The sadness
made him look younger, more innocent. He thought no one noticed.

But someone did.

Once, I bathed in anxiety,
soaking it all into my follicles and letting it slide
between my bones and through my muscles like ice water.
And I reeked.
Others couldn’t stand to be around me.
I became an inhuman symbol,
something robotic and unfeeling.

Then, I reached the peak of hypocrisy--
rejected sparkling convention yet was
simultaneously enamored with it.
I binged on harsh words
aimed at diminishing my sense of self.
I was a frail,
98-pound girl
looking into the mirror
and seeing only excess.

Throughout, I was weighted with bruised limbs--
from being grabbed too hard and pounded too rough against the floor,
and broken down doors and cracked cellphones--
which my father threw violently against the wall.
I watched the glass shatter and end tables topple
down at my mother’s feet,
her eyes wide and glassy,
her face fallen.

Once, I stood naked in a sputtering shower
and slammed my fist
—twice—
into the face of the person I loved
the most, leaving him
with a haunted
eye.

Then, I picked a flower from the sky.

Throughout, I cried because my father left me,
while pretending I was only crying
about a sad song.

These days no longer belong to me,
but the voices are still there.
And the ache.
And the fear.